India Insight

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)

For more than 30 years, Mike Pandey has been a man with a mission. In its special issue on Heroes of the Environment in 2009, Time magazine credited the maker of wildlife documentaries with efforts to protect “everything from whale sharks to elephants, vultures to medicinal plants.”

In 1994, Pandey became the first Asian film-maker to win the Wildscreen Panda Award, better known as the Green Oscar, for his film on the capture of wild elephants. He also won the award twice in the next decade.

In April this year, Pandey was honoured at an event to mark 100 years of Indian cinema. His latest film, a docudrama on India’s dwindling tiger numbers, has a Bollywood connection – and features Amitabh Bachchan and John Abraham.

Pandey spoke to Reuters India Online on making documentaries, why he stayed away from Bollywood cinema all this while and how his latest effort “The Return of the Tiger” hit a stumbling block in Madhya Pradesh. Excerpts from the interview.

Amitabh Bachchan is caught in a political controversy yet again. The 67-year old-actor finds himself in the middle of a row over his presence at government functions in Mumbai and Pune.

While no official reason has been given, Bachchan’s presence at a government function in Mumbai last week has raised hackles in the Congress party, ostensibly because of Bachchan’s bitter relationship with the Gandhi family.

Later the same week, his son Abhishek’s posters were removed from an Earth Day function for which he had earlier been declared ambassador, organised by the Congress-run Delhi state government.